Tuesday 5-13-08:
Wake up, breakfast, load up the vans and head to class at AUC. Another 4 hours of fluids. Professor Taslim is one of the best professors I have had yet. He doesn’t miss a thing, and he is very helpful with questions. I was worried about having 4 hours of 1 class 4 times a week, but I think that it is going to work. Were learning a lot, but I'm enjoying it. After class, we head up to the knitting and carpet factory that I talked about yesterday…the trip out there is scary to say the least. We drive to an outskirt town of Cairo, through dirt roads with people living meagerly everywhere along the way. There were whole communities of dilapidated houses everywhere. I was feeling terrible for these people and I couldn’t believe that they were living like this. I started freaking out a bit…culture shock…it just seemed like there was an infinite amount of people living this way, with no way of getting out…this was the first time that I had the though “I want to go home”…
We get to the knitting factory, and it is actually a lot nicer than I was expecting. It seemed like the women working there really enjoyed it. The products that they make are very nice, and very authentic. We stayed for about a half hour asking questions using a translator, just to get a feel for what we could do to help them out…we left and headed to the carpet factory…we drove through more of the same shack like neighborhoods and arrive at the factory. Right when we walked in there was a rug in the front room made especially for the president of Fulham F.C. in England…We are greeted by a lady decked out in designer clothing who gave us the schpeal on the place.. She told us about how they are a family business, and how they are linked with a school in the area and that they provide young kids with an artistic trade that they can use to provide money for their families…blah blah blah I didn’t believe a word she was saying. She then says that they are the oldest and one of the most prestigious carpet factories in all of Egypt…Then she gives us the tour, which made me want to puke. There were whole families working on massive looms, including the little kids in the families. The carpet’s they made were beautiful, I have to admit, but to watch these little kids make carpets like they were robots was just really hard to watch. There was one girl who had nicked her hand with the knife that they use, and was bleeding…I couldn’t believe what I was looking at…it was like a small sweat shop for families…I couldn’t believe that this lady who ran the place was wearing all of this designer clothing, and that she was employing little kids to make the carpets…it was ridiculous…I mean I guess that if the kids probably don’t have another option in life, that it is a good alternative, but at least give them a chance with school before just sticking them in a carpet factory to make quilts. And this wasn’t even the part that made me the most upset. I couldn’t stop thinking “if this is such a prestigious carpet factory…why do they need our help?”…and I found out why when the tour ended…Cruella Deville (designer clothing lady) had no idea that we wanted to help her out. She thought we were there to buy carpets. She starts bringing out every type of carpet that they produce and giving us a background on all of them. The whole group is just staring around, just like at the meeting the day before, with the “what the F#@$” look on. Someone asks her about the help that we thought we were going to give her, and she looked confused. Then someone explained to her what we were doing there, and she kind of realized what was going on…There has been a serious misunderstanding with the NGO we are working with…and everyone in the group seems extremely frustrated about it. After a few more minutes of standing around and feeling super awkward about what we were doing there we head back to the vans and head home. Driving through the slums again made me really miss home a lot. I couldn’t stop thinking about how there can be people living like this…It’s overwhelming because I wish there was something that I could do, but there seems to be nothing. And with our partnership with the NGO falling apart it makes it even worse…all I wanted to do was leave Egypt for a while…but when I got back to Zamalek (the island the hotel is on) I was back to my comfort zone and I began to feel a little better. I can’t believe that Zamalek is now my comfort zone, because when I got off of the plane and arrived at Zamalek, I remember being totally overwhelmed with the chaos. Now I walk around Zamalek like its totally fine, which it is. But it’s just crazy how going to the slums in the outskirts of Cairo REALLY put things into perspective for me…back at the hotel I finished my fluids HW and then went out to eat…edited some photos and blogged. Passed out. More for tomorrow.
Peace
-Al
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